


Think I'll Linger Here

by waitingforacall



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of Terry, Post-Season/Series 10, i'm just soft for franny's relationship with her uncles, mention of past abuse/trauma, uncle Mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 18:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingforacall/pseuds/waitingforacall
Summary: The first time it happened, Mickey was unprepared. Unprepared for the redhead to throw themselves at him, no regard for their own safety or what would happen if he wasn’t ready. Unprepared for the words that would come out of that redhead’s mouth, and what they would mean. And majorly unprepared for how he would feel about all of it.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 10
Kudos: 116





	Think I'll Linger Here

**Author's Note:**

> This idea literally wouldn't leave me alone so I decided to write it down and now here it is. Hope you enjoy! The title is taken from "Morning Flowers" by Brock Tyler, aka the song that plays under their vows, because I'm a soft bitch. 
> 
> Mickey's POV so it's got some language, but nothing that wouldn't be said in canon. Also TW for mentions of past abuse/trauma, but again, it's nothing compared to canon. 
> 
> This is not only my first fic in the Shameless fandom but my first published fic -- take that as you will, I guess.

It was a couple of weeks after his and Ian’s “honeymoon” and they had the house to themselves. Lip and Tami were moved out, Debbie was out trying to find work, Carl was doing god knows what, and the kids were at school. They were lounging around the house, taking advantage of the fact that they were still newlyweds and no one expected them to be providing or pitching in just yet. As they sat, lazily cuddling on the couch and drifting in and out of consciousness, Mickey smiled to himself. He was folded into Ian’s arms and leaned up against his chest -- right where he fit perfectly (even if he would never say sappy shit like that out loud.) It was nice. He liked feeling safe, and knowing that he had Ian and Ian had him, and nothing was ever going to change that again. He began to drift off to sleep amidst thoughts of the lanky, freckled kid that he had fallen in love with in between graffiti threats and thrown dip. 

He was woken up by a finger poking him softly in the ribs. “Hey, Mick. Get up,” a voice whispered in his ear. “I said we’d watch the kids and I have to go pick them up.” 

“Sounds like a you problem, Gallagher” Mickey grumbled, not even opening his eyes. “They’re not my fucking family.” 

At that, Ian picked up Mickey’s hand and ran his finger across the silver band that rested there on his third finger, right in the middle of the “U.” “Except that they are your family now, asshole.” Ian replied, with the biggest smile plastered across his dumb fucking face. 

“Yeah, yeah. Go get the kids, and I’ll stay here and make some fuckin’ sandwiches.” Mickey griped as he swatted Ian’s hand away and stood up from the couch. 

“Well, aren’t you just a little domestic bitch,” Ian cooed despite the death glare that Mickey shot him. Mickey turned his body just in time to narrowly avoid an ass grab, but, nevertheless, ended up with a slobbery smack on the cheek. “See you soon,” Ian yelled as he threw on his coat and headed out the front door. 

\---

Four peanut butter sandwiches on four plastic plates later, Mickey heard the front door open and his husband enter the house with the eleven-year-old and the four-year-old in tow. He could hear the difference between Ian’s large footsteps, Liam’s careful ones, and Franny’s small and excited ones on the creaky hardwood as they made their way through the living room and towards the kitchen. 

“Hey, kid,” he said to Liam as the boy entered the kitchen. “There’s sandwiches and shit on the table.” It was only then that he noticed the suspect lack of red hair in the room, except of course, for the tall fucking menace who had his arm annoyingly wrapped around Mickey’s middle and was delivering a soft kiss to his temple. “Hey, where’s Franny?” 

Taking advantage of the fact that Ian was distracted in looking around for the young girl, Mickey pushed out of Ian’s arms and went to look in the living room. As soon as he was standing in view of the doorway, Franny turned around from where she was crouched at the other end of the room, rifling through her small pink backpack. She shot up like a rocket, a piece of paper clutched in her little fist. 

“UNCLE MICKEY!” she yelled excitedly, before running at him with no warning and flinging herself into his arms. She was damn lucky that necessity had led him to develop quick reflexes because he was able to catch her before her small body hit the ground again. Having been caught off guard by the whole  _ four-year-old running at him and fuckin jumping on him  _ thing, Mickey didn’t even register what had happened until he looked over at Ian, who had  _ another _ huge grin taking over his entire face. 

“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that, Gallagher?” he growled, annoyed about whatever the hell was making his husband look like that because whatever it was, it was sure to annoy him (and maybe delight him, but fuck that). 

It was like Ian and Mickey were magnets, and Ian could only spend so long on his own before he needed to wrap himself back around the shorter man, completing his body only through attaching it back onto Mickey’s. Sure enough, as soon as he could be, Ian was back with his arm around Mickey’s shoulders and nuzzling his face into Mickey’s neck, despite the excitable four-year-old who was still sitting in Mickey’s arms, touching the tattoos on his fingers like she liked to do whenever he would let her get close enough.

“Well, Mick,” Ian said, his voice so unbearably soft it made Mickey tense up, “Franny just called you  _ Uncle  _ Mickey. She’s never called you that before.” 

At the mention of her name and Mickey’s new label, Franny dropped Mickey’s hand, smiled at her uncles, and began to chant in a low voice, “Un-cle Mick-ey, Un-cle Mick-ey, Un-cle Mick-ey.” This made Ian laugh, which was enough of an incentive for her to keep going, barely able to contain her little puffy laughter as she did.

_ Mickey was seven years old again, watching his uncles whisper conspiratorially with Terry at whatever “family function” served as the excuse for the Milkovich gang to gather that week. He was ten and being dumped at Uncle Joe’s house for the weekend, where he was put to work filing serial numbers off guns bigger than him until his fingers bled. He was fourteen and watching a group of his uncles force Jamie and Joey to fight one another until the front of both of their shirts were caked in blood and neither knew whose was whose. He was nineteen and facing the whole group of his uncles at that godforsaken christening, and watching as they cheered Terry on, further egging on the fists that flew at his face one after the other.  _

Ian had clearly noticed Mickey’s far away stare and the way that his body was tensing up, and he had taken Franny into his own arms and was now tickling her, producing nervous huffs from the child. He had hoped that he would be able to distract her from the obvious change in Mickey’s mood, but she could tell something was wrong and was now burying her head in Ian’s chest. 

“Uncle Ian, I make Uncle Mickey sad?” her small voice cut through the cotton fabric of Ian’s T-shirt. “I didn’t mean to!” she yelled and started to cry, the sobs wracking her tiny body. 

“Uncle Mickey’s not sad because of you, Fran. Sometimes he just gets sad and we need to step back and leave him alone for a bit. Can you do that for me?” Ian asked, trying to placate her into playing by herself so that he could focus on his husband, who was still standing frozen in the middle of the kitchen, staring intently at the wall. 

“Okay. But I want to show Uncle Mickey my drawing.” she handed Ian the piece of paper which had been clutched in her hand the entire time, and Ian set it down on the counter so that he could put her down. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure we get to look at it together as soon as he’s feeling better,” Ian soothed with a hand on her little shoulder. Satisfied with this answer, she walked back into the living room and sat down at her tea set. Once he was satisfied with the state of his niece, hearing her babble to her bears about “one or two cubes of sugar,” it was on to the matter at hand. 

Careful not to spook him too much, Ian placed his hand gently on Mickey’s shoulder and asked, “Hey, Mickey? You okay?” 

At this, Mickey snapped back to the Gallagher kitchen; to the taller man who was looking at him with an expression of concern, to the washer that never seemed to stop shaking, and to the fact that he was surrounded by the oddly comforting mess that was the Gallagher house and not the decrepit shambles of the Milkovich one. 

“It’s nothing man, just some shit from the past. Ya know, Terry and family and shit. It’s nothing.” Mickey replied, desperate to get out of the kitchen and to a space where he could freak out without worrying about Ian and that fucking look on his face.

Upon the mention of Terry, the look on Ian’s face somehow got even more worried, and Mickey could sense what was coming next. “Look, man, I’m fine. Just go be an uncle. I’ll be upstairs.” 

As he climbed the stairs, he thought about the mantras he had been told throughout his life: “family is family” and “family don’t rat each other out.” At the time, he had taken this to mean that family stuck by each other, even if that meant forking up the cash for bail or helping each other “get rid of” a problem. But, he thought bitterly as he closed the accordion door to the bedroom, that didn’t extend to him. Most of the family didn’t give a fuck whether he was alive or dead, and the rest wanted to kill him themselves. So much for “family is family.”

\---

After absolutely annihilating some little shits in a shooting game, Mickey was feeling less like everything was absolutely fucked. He could hear the dumbass lilt that Ian always got around kids floating up from downstairs as he played tea with Franny and smiled to himself because Ian sounded so happy. He started thinking about his uncles again, and how different Ian was with Franny and Fred. They would never know the feeling of being a burden, put to work because no one wanted to take care of them. Ian would never allow that to happen, and nothing proved that more than the tea party that Mickey could hear him participating in downstairs. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble from his stomach, and he remembered the goddamn peanut butter sandwich that was probably still sitting on the table, abandoned without a thought. As he headed down the stairs and into the kitchen in search of said sandwich, he noticed a slightly crumpled piece of paper sitting on the counter. 

Grabbing the sandwich from the table, he walked over to the counter and picked up the aforementioned paper. He thought about getting Ian’s attention and asking what it was, but he could hear Ian commenting that “The tea is very delicious Franny,” and he knew better than to interrupt. His curiosity got the better of him, and he began to unfold the paper as he made his way through the sandwich. 

What greeted him was a child’s drawing, with 11 vaguely people-shaped figures lined up in a row. At the top, it read  _ My Family _ in big chunky letters that were clearly written with crayon. Mickey looked over the eleven figures, chuckling to himself at the features that indicated which figure was which. He found the tall blonde figure of Tami, who was holding a small blonde figure that had to be Fred. Next to her was a short figure with blue eyes, which was easily identifiable as Lip. As he surveyed them further, he smiled at the tall one with red hair and a big ass smile because even in the crude child-like drawing, he could identify the man that he loved. Next to the “Ian” figure was a shorter figure with a smirk on its face and black letters visible on its fingers. 

He stopped and stared at the drawing, at the figure that was so clearly him under the label of “My Family.” He thought about the time that Mandy came home with a similar drawing at around the same age, and their mom put it up on the fridge with a random magnet that she had been able to find in the drawer. Mickey loved how happy the drawing had made her, and he kept returning to the kitchen to check that it was still there throughout the following days. 

And then Terry noticed it. He had stumbled in drunk one evening and gone to the fridge, where the bright colored drawing caught his eye. “What the fuck is this?” he had bellowed into the darkness of the house, and Mickey watched from the doorway as he ripped it off the fridge and crumpled it in his giant hands, throwing it onto the ground and stepping on it with the same distaste of squashing an insect. Laura had run into the kitchen and tried to calm him down, begging him to be quiet because the kids were sleeping. Six-year-old Mickey, hidden from sight by the couch, watched as Terry’s disgusted expression turned toward Laura, and the hand had come down across her face, nearly knocking her over. He quickly ran into Mandy’s room and found her crying, and had sat down with her on the floor, keeping her sobs quiet and holding her as the sounds from the kitchen echoed through the thin walls. 

“Uncle Mickey?” Franny’s small voice sounded from behind him. Mickey swiped his hand across his eyes once, twice, and then turned around to face her, still holding her drawing in his hand. “You like my drawing?” 

“Hey, kid. It’s a great drawing.” He watched as her face lit up with one of the biggest smiles he had ever seen from her. Feeling better after watching how happy he had made her, he crouched down so he could look at her better and said, “I really liked how you drew Uncle Ian’s dumbass face. Nice job.” He held up his hand for a high-five, which she eagerly returned, her little hand hitting his larger one. “Has Uncle Ian seen your drawing?” 

She got a look right before she yelled “Uncle Eeeeean!” and the man came running in, a panicked look in his eyes as he looked around. Seeing that there was no immediate danger, he looked down to find his badass husband crouched down and holding the delicate hand of Franny, who turned around and excitedly said “Uncle Ian!” 

“Hey, kiddo! What’s up?” Ian asked, the lilt sneaking back into his voice. 

“Look at my drawing!” she handed the well-loved piece of paper to her uncle and walked over to the other one, who was still perched on the floor. “Up!” she cried, wanting to be lifted so that she could look at the drawing with Ian. Mickey picked her up and placed her on his hip, where she was getting just slightly too big to sit, and moved next to Ian where he could be sure that she would be involved in the viewing. 

“Fran, this drawing is amazing! Look, there’s Uncle Lip and Aunt Tami, and Fred!” he pointed to each of the figures as he identified each one. “And there’s me, and Mickey, and your mom, and Uncle Carl…” 

Franny joined in on the pointing, exclaiming “And Sandy, and Liam, and even Grandpa Frank! It the whole family!” she pointed at her crayon letters at the top. “My teacher said I draw too many people, but I telled her that my family is big, right, Uncle Ian?” 

“That’s exactly right, Franny. You did a great job,” Ian promised her and pressed his large fist against her small one in a congratulatory fist bump. 

“Show it to mommy?” she asked, voice hesitant. Upon Ian’s affirmative nod, she began to squirm in Mickey’s arms, indicating that she wanted to get down. Mickey placed her back on the floor, and she got a mischievous look on her face before she said “Uncle Ian? Uncle Mickey says he likes your face,” and then set off in a run, desperate to get back to her bears and their now-cold tea. 

“Oh you do, huh?” Ian teased Mickey, grabbing his hip and turning him around so that they were facing each other.

“For the record, I was saying that I liked how she drew your dumbass fucking face in the picture, asshole. Really captured the dumbass.” 

“Yeah, whatever, you know you love me.” Ian teased back, his voice irresistibly soft. “Come ‘ere.” He leaned into a sweet and tame kiss, just a small peck on the lips, but one which said everything.  _ I love you. You’re my family. I’m so glad you’re here with me.  _ After a few moments, Ian pulled back and asked “Hey, were you really okay earlier?”

Mickey knew that Ian knew the answer, and not wanting to fight it anymore, admitted, “Not really. The whole uncle thing just got me thinking about my family and it messed with me, man. I don’t know shit about being an uncle.” 

Ian snaked his arm around Mickey’s shoulders and leaned in close to his ear. “Well, she thinks you’re a pretty great one,” he said, pointing at the little girl who was laughing as she poured tea into a plastic cup. “And so do I,” he assured with a small kiss on his husband’s cheek. Ian handed Mickey the drawing and pointed to the figure with the blue eyes and tattooed fingers. “That’s all the proof you should need.” 

After a quick squeeze of Mickey’s shoulder, Ian left him to look at the drawing once more. As he looked down at the line of crayon figures, he realized that  _ this  _ is what family was always supposed to be: people who genuinely love you, people who will be there for you no matter what, and people who are excited to have you around. This ragtag group of ten, through one beautiful red-headed boy, had shown him what it meant to be a part of a real family, and then accepted him into theirs. He was a  _ real part  _ of it. 

Wanting to honor this family that had given him more than he ever thought he could have, he grabbed one of the dingy letter magnets off the side of the fridge and used it to attach the drawing there, front and center, above the calendar. He stood there for a moment and stared at it: the chunky crayon letters, the bright colors of the eleven figures, and the inherent “family-ness” of it. He smiled to himself, proud that he now lived where this one would never be torn down in a fit of rage, but instead would sit here, untouched. That is until Debbie got home and immediately took it down, insisting on showing it to everyone and acting the proud and doting mother. 

“Uncle Mickey! Come play with us!” he heard his niece shout from the other room. “It’s fun!”

As he moved to join Ian and Franny, who were now building towers with blocks and then knocking them down, he took one last look at the drawing, now resting comfortably between the take-out menus and only slightly overdue bills. He glanced at each of the eleven figures, and how naturally his figure seemed to fit in with the rest. This was it, he thought, as he walked into the living room to play with his niece, who would always have him to look out for her.  _ His fucking family.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Well, there it is. I'm soft for these boys, and I hope you enjoyed this dive into Mickey's feelings and perception of family. 
> 
> If you want to further interact with me, you can follow me on [ Tumblr! ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/waitingforacall)


End file.
